


quintessence of dust

by Clavain



Series: letters from the land of the dead [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel possesses Sam, Endverse AU, Gen, Michael Possessing Dean Winchester, Post-Apocalypse, Sam works through his possession issues, WIP, mentions of lucifer, will get more heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 19:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5345990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clavain/pseuds/Clavain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean says Yes and Sam is still there with No on repeat even though he doesn’t know what it means anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	quintessence of dust

Sam has been walking in the dust and mud where cities once were for decades. Dean is dead. Long live Dean. There is no closure here.

Nothing flickers within his brother but Michael, hurting his eyes more than the sulphurous air, and cities are razed whilst Lucifer remains untouched. He circles Sam at night like smog or fog or miasma, bringing disease and discontent in his wake. He tells him No, and it doesn't seem to mean as much as it once did.

Sometimes Sam thinks that the only thing binding Castiel to him and Earth when all other seraphs watch the world burn from afar in their legions is their mutual grief over Dean. They mourn together without mourning. They continue to pace through this wreck in honour of some projected shadow of his memory.

There is no night or day anymore. They live in forced purgatorial twilight, with no relief and no moment when the faltering light ceases, although it tilters on the precipice like a threat. The world exists like it has drawn in a breath and never released it, now choking and suffocating in the thick suspense.

According to all the strings of fate and heaven, Sam owes Lucifer a debt of flesh and soul.

According to Castiel, heaven owes Sam a debt of free will. But how much does that mean when Castiel says it through Jimmy Novak's throat in his voice?

Sam isn't sure because yes, he did crack the world apart like an egg when he tore through Lilith’s self.

(The shifting tectonic plates, he had been told, are like the earth’s eggshell fragments and the yellow yolk core should never reach the surface or the world will end in fire. It didn’t all end in fire, just continents, but not all of them. The air is sulphurous even so far from there where he resides from the residue which freezes the sun, and his mind burns with planted images of lahar and remembered geography lessons on stratovolcanoes and supervolcanoes and the threat gleefully imparted from time to time, just an image of Yellowstone. He waits, and that particular apocalypse hasn’t come yet.) 

But he's still not certain how much agency he had over his own choice. But Dean would tell him to Man Up and Take Responsibility, and he can't speak ill if the dead so he does.

No is his responsibility. Lucifer can haunt him and hurt him and hunt him and he will keep the word on repeat: No, No. It's like his default setting. Sometimes he thinks that humanity would suffer less if he gave in. He tells those doubts No too, declares them planted by Lucifer in one of his dreams.

Castiel asks of he's okay, and No slips out before he can hold it back and drowns him them both like a flood.

-

It's getting to dangerous. A decade ago Lucifer would have humored him and ordered all the demons to back off, patted his vessel on the shoulder and declared his wandering a "journey of self-discovery". Perhaps Lucifer is starting to lose confidence that Sam will eventually choose his burning brilliance over another day facing this desert world and the shell of his brother.

He's started sending demons after Castiel. Not Sam, they treat him like a fucking flower, but Castiel they run for with knives and powerful ill intent. If he so much as falls and scrapes his elbow then the demons are executed the following night in his dreams. He could twist this to his advantage, but he doesn't have the energy.

They're starving. They're weak.

All it takes is one solo nighttime attack (inevitable, really, they couldn’t get lucky forever and they’re so exposed out here) before Castiel is bleeding grace onto the floor. It takes Sam a too long to stab the offending demon and he misses the heart to puncture a lung. The evil is expunged but the twitching vessel dies looking at Sam, aware and in pain, yet incapable of speech. Castiel chokes and bleeds pure white light from a body they had both thought human. He coughs and something comes out with rising intonation at the end, like a question or a plea. Sam ignores it.

"Possess me." Sam says, desperate. 'I won't last without you. I'll say yes to anything. It's lost perspective. I'm a powerful vessel. Use me for good."

The demon’s corpse, no longer possessed, lies heavily between them.

A day ago they would have thought it impossible, but back then Castiel bled thick common blood and was less angelic than he had ever been before. His blue eyes widen momentarily and he says something unintelligible which would have been lost anyway because Sam can't hear or see, and then he feels something pry open his ribcage and slip inside.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a Hamlet quote
> 
> Also this was initially partially inspired by Valikagami’s ‘And this Great Blue World of Ours’ which you should definitely read because it’s amazing. It was supposed to get different but it didn't and now this is uncomfortably close to that fic thematically and stylistically. If Vailkagami wants me to take it down I will.
> 
> Yeah, so this has been sitting on my PC literally since January so I thought I'd just post what I had in an embarrassingly short chapter. Hopefully this will motivate me to continue.


End file.
